Year’s Best Fantasy 7

David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds.

The legendary editing team of David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer return with the much-anticipated seventh installment of their popular anthology series showcasing the best-selling authors and rising stars of fantasy fiction. This engaging volume collects the essential fantasy stories of 2006, a year of outstanding and original offerings.

Year’s Best Fantasy 7

by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds.

ISBN: 9781892391506

Published: 2007

Available Format(s): Trade Paperback

The legendary editing team of David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer return with the much-anticipated seventh installment of their popular anthology series showcasing the best-selling authors and rising stars of fantasy fiction. This engaging volume collects the essential fantasy stories of 2006, a year of outstanding and original offerings. Representing the breadth of talent in the fantasy genre and collecting each year’s most outstanding stories, the Year’s Best Fantasy series continues to be the definitive treasury of fantasy fiction.

“The seventh annual fantasy anthology from the renowned husband-and-wife editing team of Hartwell and Cramer is arguably the strongest and most thematically diverse. Complementing works from genre luminaries like Michael Moorcock, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., and Lucius Shepard are notable selections from newer authors, such as Laird Barron’s powerfully atmospheric ‘Hallucigenia,’ a dark fantasy masterwork that blends Lovecraftian horror with particle physics. This volume is essential reading for any fantasy aficionado.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The second larger-format edition of Hartwell and Cramer’s annual showcases work by three repeaters from last year, Greg van Eekhout, Laird Barron, Gavin J. Grant, and with two stories—one a lubricious farce, the other a heartbreaker—by Gene Wolfe. The other 15 honorees constitute a who’s-who-and-cool in contemporary fantasy….”
—Booklist

David G. Hartwell is a senior editor at Tor/Forge Books and the publisher of the New York Review of Science Fiction. A recipient of the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Eaton awards, he is the author of Age of Wonders, editor of The World Treasury of Science Fiction, editor of the Year’s Best Fantasy series, and co-editor of two anthologies of the best Canadian science fiction, Northern Stars and Northern Suns.

Kathryn Cramer is an author, editor, artist, and photographer who lives in Westport, New York. She is the World Fantasy Award–winning editor of The Architecture of Fear and the co-editor of the anthologies The Ascent of Wonder, The Hard SF Renaissance, and the Year’s Best Science Fiction series.

Praise for Year’s Best Fantasy 6

“Hartwell and Cramer (The Ascent of Wonder) present 23 fantastic stories in this brilliant anthology, the first trade paperback installment of their popular Year’s Best series. Most notable are Jonathon Sullivan’s tear-jerking ‘Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane,’ which brings together physics and Kabbalistic magic during a daring escape from Nazi-occupied Denmark; Laird Barron’s ‘The Imago Sequence,’ a heart-stopping tale of some deeply disturbing photographs and the people who will do anything to see them; Delia Sherman’s ‘Walpurgis Afternoon,’ which brings glorious magic to a bland suburb; and Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sunbird,’ with its R.A. Lafferty–flavored bittersweet hilarity. Stories from such renowned authors as Esther Friesner and Gene Wolfe are surprisingly outclassed by tales from relative newcomers Alaya Dawn Johnson and Anne Harris. With selections that aren’t always technically perfect but pack a powerful emotional wallop, the editors easily meet their stated goal of offering not only a great read but also a broad and thorough overview of the current state of short fantasy fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review